Destiny's Child
by shalimar79
Summary: A young woman is rescued from her dying town by a creature whose motive is suspect.


Disclaimer: The aliens in this fic are based on the ones in the "Predator" and "Alien" movies. I'm a Predator fan because I like their hunting culture and vaguely humanoid appearance, however, I'm adhering to neither canon nor fanon for either franchise, just writing. And I'm not making a cent, but all the original characters are mine and mine alone.

Feedback: Yes, desperately, any kind, anywhere.

Archive: Yes, PBBS, AoVD, anywhere else, ask first.

Author's Notes: This one is for all the fan boys who believe Predators only see humans as prey. Not only is this a first for me, but there is absolutely no sex of any kind in it.

SPOILER ALERT: This fic was written before AVP-R was released and is based on stills, clips and conjecture about the then upcoming movie. Amazingly, what I wrote doesn't seriously contradict the actual movie, but if you haven't seen the movie yet, this fic could potentially spoil it for you, so don't read this fic until after you see the movie.

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_Could be worse, could be raining, _she thought, sourly remembering some bug-eyed, hunchbacked guy in a strange old video of her mother's saying that, prompting rain to pour from the heavens, just like it was now.

It seemed that no matter what Destinee Taylor did--or didn't do--her life had become one long slide into hell that she was powerless to prevent. A slide that had recently accelerated dramatically. It had started about a year ago, with her and her mother parting on bad terms, a not unusual occurrence since Destinee had become a teenager. They had had a fight over, of all things, the cutesy spelling of her first name.

_Bad enough you were fifteen when I was born! _she had bellowed. _Then you hadda go and spell my name like this! Let's put up a big fucking sign announcing to the entire world that I'm trailer park trash!_

Destinee had stormed out to go stay with a friend, also not unusual. The next morning, her mother had been found dead in their trailer. It wasn't her hard drinking, chain smoking, overeating lifestyle that had killed her, despite having a bad heart and weighing over three hundred pounds. During the night, their trailer had filled up with carbon monoxide gas from a faulty heater. Had Destinee stayed there, she would've died, too.

_That fight saved my life, and I never got to say thank you or goodbye, _she recalled, bitterly.

Then, right on schedule, payback arrived for her harsh words during their final fight. She had done one of the very things she had so savagely criticized her mother for doing. During a drunken tryst at a party a few months later, she had become pregnant. She was almost to term now.

_So I'll have my kid at seventeen and give it a name with a normal spelling. Like that'll make me soooo much better than her._

The baby shifted in her belly, as if agreeing with her sarcasm.

_If__ I get to have my kid, _Destinee added, dubiously.

To cap off the worst year of her life, monsters had invaded her no account little town. The very thought was so absurd she had to choke back hysterical laughter, even though it was all too real. She didn't know if they were aliens from outer space, or mutations of terrestrial animals that rose from the forest, spawned by mankind's polluting ways. It didn't much matter. All that mattered was what they did. Destinee had seen them burst out of living bodies, had watched them catch and kill still others. Shiny black horrors that had two sets of teeth, vicious claws and a tail they could wield like a spear. Unarmed humans had no defense against them, armed humans only a little more.

That wasn't all, however. She had heard wild tales that there was another being here, one that had fantastic weapons. It killed the monsters, but sometimes, it killed the townspeople, too. She had come across a terrible body, stripped of its skin, and had later been told it was the masked creature's handiwork. Destinee wasn't sure if she believed the stories, but she had heard strange sounds in the night, explosions unlike anything she had ever heard before, not even in the scifi shows or movies she liked to watch.

By some miracle, she had avoided being attacked by anything so far. Destinee had realized fairly quickly that the monsters seemed to be attracted to groups of people, so she had stayed solo as much as possible.

Now, she had found a shotgun next to a chewed up corpse. Destinee had seen so many such bodies in the past day that she was numb to it, prying the weapon from the lifeless fingers without batting an eye. She refused to look closely at the dead anymore, because she could identify all too many of them. If she wanted to survive to see her baby, she couldn't afford to be derailed by grief or inattention.

Impatiently, she swiped her dripping bangs out of her face so she could focus on the shotgun in her hands. Now she was sorry she had passed up chances to go out in the woods with the boys when they had done target practice. At the time, she had assumed she'd be fending off unwanted advances if she had gone with them. Knowing what she knew now, she'd have cheerfully spread her legs for the lot of them if it had meant she would know how to use this gun.

Awkwardly, Destinee rose from crouching next to the body, still studying the shotgun. As she regained her full height, the rain stopped as quickly as it had started.

"Thank God," she muttered. "Maybe I can see now."

What caught her eye, however, wasn't a clearer view of the weapon. It was a triangle of three small red dots that now graced her chest. Destinee might not be a hunter, but she had watched TV enough to recognize a fancy laser sight when she saw one. Trying not to collapse from fright, Destinee clamped her jaws shut tight so as not to scream while slowly raising her eyes to follow the line of that sight.

When she reached its source, her mouth went dry, and it was all she could do not to pee down her leg. The being before her might be man shaped, but it was simply too large to be a man. She was pretty sure it was about twenty feet away from her, but even at that distance, it was immense, perhaps eight feet tall. It was armed to the teeth with a bristling assortment of bizarre weaponry, capped by a mask from which the sight that was trained on her emerged. On its shoulder was what appeared to be a small cannon, aimed ominously at her.

_It has dreadlocks, _Destinee thought, inanely, _but I bet those claws are the real deal._

Whatever it was—it, no _he_, something about his bearing told her it was male—he was not from Earth. That revelation made her hands start fumbling with the gun in them, even though she had no idea what to do with it. The movement of her hands triggered a reaction in the creature. He advanced on her with a confidence that told her he knew she was no danger to him. As he got bigger and bigger, filling up her vision, Destinee was certain of one thing:

The slide to hell had stopped at its final destination.

""""""

The Cleaner couldn't say what stayed his hand.

Bodies had been falling to his weaponry—and in some cases—his bare hands, ever since he had landed here. So many hard meats and their nasty spawners that he had lost count. Although they weren't his intended prey this hunt, many soft meats had also fallen. In their panic, some had attacked him, but most had already been hosts when he had killed them, a mercy they would never know he had bestowed upon them. If not for the sudden downpour that had recently ceased, he would've been covered with a slimy combination of congealed gore by now.

When the human female noticed his sight on her chest, her little hands started fumbling awkwardly with one of her species' long projectile weapons. Holding a weapon alone was reason enough for the Cleaner to dispatch her. He had killed several of her kind for that already today.

But his mask detected a wrongness about her torso that he couldn't decipher through whatever she was doing with the weapon. Curious, he stormed right up to her, knowing that she had no defense against him if she couldn't make it function. She must have realized it, too, because she emitted a high-pitched wail of fear and stepped backwards, tangling up her own feet so that she sat down, hard.

The Cleaner reached out and kicked her shoulder with enough force to knock her flat, but not enough to inflict serious damage. Even so, all the breath whooshed out of her when her back thudded against the mud-packed earth. Reaching down, he plucked the weapon from her grasp and flung it away. Immediately, her free hands covered the very place where he wanted to look, but they couldn't hide what had caught his attention.

Beneath the fragile bones spread across the swell of her belly, another life fluttered. Not a hard meat implant, waiting to burst forth to wreak havoc, but another of her own kind. This female was carrying young, a new life, amidst all this death.

In his many years of hunting the soft meats, the Cleaner hadn't ever been interested in their females. They were a good deal smaller than the males, who were already small enough in comparison to him. He had hunted, killed and skinned enough of the males to know their reproductive anatomy was roughly the same as his own. He had never really thought about it, but it logically followed that their females wouldn't be all that different from what he was used to. The delicate life curled in his captive's abdomen confirmed their reproductive similarity.

This had been a long, long night, the longest he could remember, in a life that spanned several of this planet's centuries. The Cleaner knew that most of the population in this area had been killed by the hard meats, either outright or because they had been used as hosts. The hunter in him told him that this place would need what this female carried once he at last vanquished the threat to her kind.

_Male, _he noted, clinically, as the young human picked that moment to reveal its genitalia and confirm his assessment.

She must have finally caught her breath, because sounds with a regular cadence issued from the fleshy maw in her soft face. The Cleaner had heard enough such utterances on this planet to know they were her language, but he had hardly more interest in the soft meats' speech than he had in their females. No doubt, she was asking that he spare her life, not realizing that he already had.

He knew he didn't have much time to waste, but he needed a few minutes to regroup after hours of endless killing. Finding a safe place for this pregnant prey female made an elegant kind of sense.

When he offered her his hand, she studied it with a sensible amount of trepidation. Changing his mask from thermal to normal vision, he took a moment to view it as she must—darkly mottled, encrusted with blood, bearing five deadly claws and large enough to cover much of her forearm. At last she set her smooth, pale hand, with its bizarrely colored, blunt nails, in his.

_Paint, _he mused, realizing what the coloration had to be, as his hand swallowed hers, as well as her wrist and much of her lower arm. _Perhaps it is something soft meat males favor._

Whatever strategies she had employed to attract a mate, they had obviously been successful. He pulled her up slowly, letting her find her footing. Now that she was standing next to him, he could see how truly tiny she was, not much taller than his chest. Her pregnancy was also more pronounced, a bulge in her middle so large that threatened to overbalance her. In the distance, anguished screams erupted from soft meats that weren't as lucky as this female. To his surprise, she reacted to it by moving closer to him.

_Since I didn't kill her, she must think I'm bound to protect her, _the Cleaner surmised, peering down at the light, tousled fur on her skull.

The Cleaner knew there was nowhere here where she could safely hide. The hard meats would scale the tallest tree and use their acidic blood to melt through the strongest walls. The only way to escape them while on the ground was to kill them before they killed you. That she hadn't already been eaten or made into a host showed that Paya was sometimes merciful even to prey.

The soft meats had wheeled conveyances, but he dared not send her away in one. If she was to become infected, and a hard meat burst from her a long distance from here, the contagion would be out of control. Left unchecked, the hard meats would overrun this planet in a relatively short time, destroying an old, well-established hunting preserve for future generations of hunters. That was not to be allowed, which was why he had come here in the first place.

However, he had seen a small field of winged conveyances that could travel in the sky. If he could put her in one of those, she could leave the immediate area without danger of becoming infected en route. Once he had neutralized the threat, she could return to begin the work of repopulating.

The Cleaner took a few steps forward, tugging her along, trying to indicate that she should follow him. The female didn't need any encouragement, keeping up with him as well as her short legs would allow. However, she couldn't keep up his pace for long before she gave a short cry, stopped and clutched at her protruding belly.

Reflexively, he came back to her and spread his hand across it, unconcerned with how she might react. Her hands wrapped protectively around his massive wrist, but there was nothing more she could do. Adjusting his mask, he could hear the fast patter of the new life's heart against the slower rhythm of his mother's. All at once, he felt a soft blow of protest through his palm. The little one must have sensed the hand extended across his home and was registering his displeasure.

_Admirable arrogance, _he approved, darkly amused. _This one might be worth coming back to look for some day._

Dropping his hand, he proceeded forward at a more accommodating speed for the pregnant female. They passed several dead bodies of both species, many of them mangled, some reduced to smoldering husks by the hard meats' acidic fluids. He noticed that she kept her eyes resolutely forward, not letting herself dwell on the carnage at her feet. The Cleaner was grateful they saw no living creatures of any stripe on the way, but when they arrived at their destination, it became apparent why. The air field was thick with hard meats, most of them jockeying for egress into a long building with a rounded roof. Their interest could only mean that there was life within it.

"Shit," hissed the female, coming up beside him.

It was one of the few words in her language the Cleaner knew, and he heartily agreed that her use of it was most appropriate. Her utterance also reminded him of her presence, which he would need to do something about before he waded into battle with the hard meats. Taking her arm, he steered her away from the building towards the winged conveyance that was farthest from it. Opening an impossibly small door in its side, he hoisted her up and deposited her in front of what could only be its control center.

Her soft face swiveled towards him in dismay. Although the Cleaner couldn't understand her words, the tone was enough to convey the problem—she didn't know how to fly it.

_Cjit, _he thought, unconsciously echoing her earlier word. _Why would she know how to fly it? The only females on my planet who would know how hunt. Females don't hunt until they're too old to bear young. This female obviously isn't._

Perhaps one of the humans trapped within the rounded building would know how to fly it, but how would he know which one to spare? Puzzled, he turned back to the female. It took several minutes of frustrating back and forth, with him recording her words and playing them back to her, before they finally agreed that what he was looking for was called a "pilot." The Cleaner got her to enunciate the word so there would be no mistaking it when he played it back to the other soft meats. She didn't protest when he closed the door, indicating that she understood his intent. While being in the plane wouldn't keep her safe, the location was unusual enough that he thought it unlikely the hard meats would go looking there during the short time he expected to be gone.

""""""

As Destinee watched her unlikely rescuer leave, she enjoyed the carnal comforts of warmth and dryness for the first time in many hours. Now that she wasn't in imminent danger of death, she realized she was hungry. Rummaging around in the cockpit's interior, she unearthed a half-eaten candy bar. Having eaten worse during the course of the past day, she took her time with it, enjoying each mouthwatering bite as the delicacy it was.

Once she had eaten, Destinee watched droplets of leftover rain meander down the outside of the windshield, idly licking chocolate off her fingers while at last allowing herself to think. The being that had captured her wasn't some mindless monster, like the black spiny creatures, but a soldier or a hunter of some sort. It was clear from their strange exchange that he intended to find a pilot who could fly this plane and her to safety.

_Is he doing this because of my baby?_

She thought about his frightful hand spread across her belly and shivered. Suddenly, she remembered that skinned body, hung upside down, eerily like a felled deer. Killing a man and skinning his body was methodical and deliberate. It wasn't like the killings she had watched the monsters commit. They had seemed unconcerned with anything other than the killing itself. And, sometimes, the eating.

"He's a hunter," she realized, a chill spreading through her that had nothing to do with having spent the night in the rain.

Having grown up in the middle of nowhere, Destinee had known enough hunters to know what it was permissible to hunt and when. Deer that could be pregnant or have young were off limits unless there was an overpopulation problem, because the does were needed to replenish the bucks taken during hunting season.

Before she could complete her analogy, there was an explosion outside her window. One of the planes nearest to the hangar had burst into flame, allowing Destinee to watch her dubious benefactor's progress in its orange glow. With ruthless efficiency, he picked off the black shiny monsters. They fell to the cannon on his shoulder, which spat blobs of glowing death, and to the whip he wielded with a mighty arm. When they were gone, and humans boiled out of the building shooting, their fate was the same. She could tell by how he carried himself that the hunter was supremely experienced at what he did and likely reveled in that prowess. That he had spared her life—and that of her son—seemed more calculated by the minute.

When there was no more shooting, she watched his armored silhouette enter the hangar. For several minutes, all was eerily quiet. At last, he emerged, dragging a young man behind him. She could sense his terror, even from that distance, as he stumbled along behind his captor. When the hunter opened the door to her plane, the young man's relief at the sight of her was palpable. She noted the name Simms was stitched in light thread again his dark flight suit.

"Oh my God!" he howled, struggling bravely to hang onto his composure. "What does it want?"

"He wants you to fly us out of here," Destinee explained. "If you can pilot this plane, we get to live."

For a moment, she feared he would faint. "Are you serious?" Simms exclaimed, after he had recovered sufficiently, and then laughed with wild joy. "Yes, ma'm, I can fly this here plane."

The hunter's large head turned towards her, as if asking for confirmation. Not knowing what else to do, Destinee nodded vigorously. "Yes, he can fly it."

He cocked his mask at her, before again spreading a hand across her rounded stomach, a gesture that was disturbingly proprietary, now that she understood why he had spared her. Destinee couldn't help but jerk away from his touch, but she had a horrible feeling her revulsion only amused him. Quickly, she slid away from him, climbing into the copilot's seat. About as soon as she had vacated her chair, Simms was thrown forcefully into it, and the door was slammed shut.

"What the hell was that about?" he demanded.

But Destinee suddenly found herself sitting in a puddle of water. "Just fly the plane," she ordered him, tersely. "I think I'm about to be labor."

The next several hours were a blur of harrowing events. They hadn't been flying for very long when a tremendous light forced them both to close their eyes. The turbulence that followed felt as if it would swat them from the sky.

"What was that?" she asked Simms when they could see again.

"I don't know," he said, awed, "but I think it might have been a nuke."

About as soon as he completed his sentence, they were surrounded by fighter planes and forced to the ground. Soldiers dragged them from the plane as if they were criminals.

"We're not infected!" Destinee cried over and over again. "But I'm having my baby!"

Once she finally got through to them, she was hustled off to a medical facility, where they gave her a drug that made her float in and out of consciousness. When she was finally lucid again, it was her ears that woke up first. What they heard made her keep her eyes shut so she would keep on hearing it. The voices were clipped and serious, like those of soldiers on TV, making her wonder if perhaps some stereotypes might have a basis in fact.

"All three of them are perfectly normal and healthy; no signs of any infestation."

_Three?_

"The baby was born healthy?"

"Yessir, an eight pound, two ounce boy.

_My son_, Destinee sighed, inwardly, suppressing a smile lest she give her consciousness away.

"Simms, the pilot, says the Yautja killed all the Xenomorphs, and the humans who left the hangar before entering the hangar and broadcasting the word 'pilot' in Ms. Taylor's voice. He was the first person who responded, and the only one still alive by the time they left the hangar."

"One? Just _one_ Yautja did all that?"

"Yessir, that's the normal pattern. One lone wolf."

_Wolf, _her mind echoed, brightening. _It suits._

"But I was informed that the Woods woman, the one in Antarctica, said there were several there," protested the voice of the obviously senior officer.

"We think that was something … different." The hesitancy of the other's response told Destinee that he had realized she was awake.

_No point in beating around the bush. _"I'd like to see my son now," Destinee said, ignoring her sore muscles as she sat up, fixing the two uniformed men with unflinching eyes.

"We want to talk to you first," the older of the two, the leader, countered.

"When you bring me Wolf, I'll talk your ear off," she promised, trying the new name on for size. "Believe me, I got no reason to keep anything from you."

The leader's voice was mildly suspicious. "Oh? I understood the Yautja saved your life."

Destinee snorted at that. "He saved my life because he wanted to come back and hunt my son. Don't you get it, General, or whatever you are? I'm a doe. And if what you all said is true, there's a planet full of his kind out there, waiting for hunting season. We're deer to them, all of us. Maybe they brought those spiny things here to hunt, too, but that don't mean we're off the hook."

As she spoke, she realized there was a reason she had been given a return pass from hell. Her life was meant to have a purpose after all. It was to raise her son not to freeze in spotlights and to warn anyone who would listen that they were not alone in the universe. Every time Destinee remembered his name, it would remind her of how she had narrowly escaped an alien wolf today. She would do everything in her power to make sure at least her Wolf would be the one who shot first next time.


End file.
